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Here’s How To Stand Up, Stare Down Tech’s Anti-Woman Backlash

The backlash has been unmasked, and it is somewhere between surreal and revolting.

Prompted by Google’s justified firing of James Damore, a Silicon Valley software engineer who authored a memo that questioned a woman’s biological ability to master technology, the network of listservs and support groups that fosters male-centric reactionism is in the spotlight. A New York Times story highlightssome men who believe that things have gone “too far.”

Good. Only when we smoke it out can we confront it.

I wish I could say the pseudo-science advocated by some men in the tech industry — such as James Altizer and Paul Graham— was an isolated phenomenon. It isn’t. Over my career, I’ve seen these attitudes and their adherents in the world of finance, in real estate, and in virtually all the boys’ clubs into which a generation of women have forced entry to gain opportunities to the best earning jobs in the country where they can contribute to our economy.